Thursday 24 April 2014

Street Level Zen: Expectations

"When I was a boy growing up in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there on the warmth of a summer afternoon we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him I wanted to be a major league baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be president of the United States.

"Neither of us got our wish."

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Thursday 10 April 2014

Love Testimony

Nichtmeinurmel It's human to love the things that support us. I thought of Tom Hanks and his volleyball friend Wilson. I hadn't named my walking stick, which in any case had no mind beyond its reflection of my own, but the image made me laugh.

We judge love of objects crazy, childish, or most damning of all: sentimental. Of course, we say the same thing about love of people. All dependence is weakness now. But it's what got us here in the first place.

And so I say, love away. Equating indifference with strength has brought nothing but decay. Love built us. I won't apologise for it.

(Edited from 100 Days on the Mountain, copyright RK Henderson. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Thursday 3 April 2014

Walk-The-Walk Kyôsaku

Zori "One day a myoko-nin [wandering hermit monk] was traveling and he stopped in a Buddhist temple overnight. He went up to the sanctuary where they have big cushions for the priests to sit on, and he arranged the cushions in a pile on the floor and went to sleep on them. In the morning the priest came in and saw the tramp sleeping and said, 'What are you doing here desecrating the sanctuary by sleeping on the cushions and so on, right in front of the altar?' And the myoko-nin looked at him in astonishment and said, 'Why, you must be a stranger here, you can't belong to the family.'"

Alan Watts

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Ken Funakoshi.)

Wednesday 2 April 2014

WW: Coast Guard patrol boat


(U.S. Coast Guard Marine Protector Class Cutter USCGC ADELIE
[WPB 87333].)